Unfortunately, the rain doesn’t just affect schools. At 1:30pm, about 20 minutes after he was supposed to be here, I get a call from Firmin. He was almost to Yaho, but there was a river between him and me. I had actually worried about that for a minute earlier in the day because there is a place that was often flooded last year during rainy season, but I hadn’t given it too much thought. I was too excited to have a visitor!! So, I have to admit, because of how excited I was to have visitors, it made the sudden change in plans that much more sad. Another volunteer had even come with him to surprise me and see my village. After I got off the phone with them, I honestly was very close to tears. I had put so much time and effort into getting ready and looking forward to the visit. And now, when they were literally 5km from my house, it wasn’t going to happen.
Now, this might seem like an overreaction to a situation that completely out of my control, and I asked myself the same question. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that everything event I have looked forward in the past two months has been cancelled at the last minute:
The last week of March I was going to take a trip with the couple who went to Wartburg with me, but I was having some tooth problems and spring break was moved up two weeks at the last minute, so it wasn’t going to work out.
The last week of March I was going to take a trip with the couple who went to Wartburg with me, but I was having some tooth problems and spring break was moved up two weeks at the last minute, so it wasn’t going to work out.
March 31st there was a goodbye party for the volunteers leaving this summer, but the morning of the 30th there were some violent protests in the capital and the party was now off limits to everyone who wasn’t already there. This was something I was really looking forward too, and the last time I would have probably seen some volunteers.
Over Easter, I had planned to visit some friends south of me, but the President of Burkina dissolved the government a few days earlier, so travel was off limits (that wasn’t as intense as it sounds, basically he fired his 29 ministers, rehired 17 of them with 8 new ones to bring the total up to 25).
And now I was supposed to get a visit from a friend, but it rained.
Now, every single one of these situations was entirely out of my control. But it got me thinking about just how much control I am able to exercise over my life here versus my life in America.
-In America we have a stable government, but also stable electricity and stable internet (you might not think that stable internet is that important in a developing nation, but with more and more of our business world happening online, it is. If the internet is down here in Burkina, I can’t get money out of my bank account. And because I have to travel about 3 hours to even get to the bank, it’s that much more annoying). That stability gives us a daily assurance of what to expect. We know that it is (highly) unlikely that we will see rioters, that our stores will be pillaged, or that we will get to the bank only to be turned away because internet or electricity is down that day.
-In America (or at least Minnesota), we have systems in place to deal with inclement weather. It’s so effective that I often complained during high school that our roads were always plowed before the buses had to come through, meaning we wouldn’t get a snow day. We don’t often have plans ruined by a simple rainstorm, or worse; we don’t have our houses collapsed by rainstorms because we are able to build houses with more than mud bricks. (Yes, this did happen in my village. There were two people in the house and they were both killed)
-In America we are able to plan ahead to the next weekend, the month or even the next year with a high degree of certainty that everything will work out. The big events of our lives are often planned months and a year in advance. I know another volunteer here had her wedding scheduled at the end of July, but with the unrest the national exams were changed, and her soon-to-be husband now has tests during their wedding. She had to change the wedding, and most of the Americans that were going to be a part of the service are leaving before the new date.
-In America we are able to plan ahead to the next weekend, the month or even the next year with a high degree of certainty that everything will work out. The big events of our lives are often planned months and a year in advance. I know another volunteer here had her wedding scheduled at the end of July, but with the unrest the national exams were changed, and her soon-to-be husband now has tests during their wedding. She had to change the wedding, and most of the Americans that were going to be a part of the service are leaving before the new date.
So here, I’m learning not to plan for more than a week at a time, or I’m just going to get myself excited for something else that might not happen. And especially with all of the unrest that has happened here since February, I am certainly in the mindset of having a plan B, C, D, etc for every plan. Though, since Easter, everything does seem to have calmed down here. I am very thankful for that, but things are still a little behind schedule and I don’t really know exactly when school is over, exactly when I will be working at stage this summer, or exactly when I’ll take my vacation to Ghana. And while occasionally disappointing, I guess I’m learning to be more and more OK with those uncertainties.
